Quote:
Originally Posted by SAAN
I had a long debate with some Messianics that claim Christianity falsely teaches that we cant live sin free and the bible say we are delivered from sin, so we can live a life without committing sin. They claim they can live a life free of sin because they dont break the Torah and even claimed they will and can go the rest of 2013 without committing one single sin.
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You are seeing the difference between two very fundamentally different views of what "sin" is. Some Messianics (not all, by any means) have the same definition of sin as Jews do: To break a specific law of the Torah is sin.
Christians often teach an error: That it was impossible to keep the Torah. That's not true, it was certainly possible to keep the whole Torah...at least the
letter of the Law. God even said His Law was not difficult to keep.
Remember when the young wealthy ruler confronted Jesus and claimed to keep the Law? Jesus did not dispute him. Nor did Jesus dispute that the Pharisees kept the Law. He introduced, however, an entirely new aspect. To the young ruler, He said, "You have to follow me."
What does "follow me" mean? Did you ever see the visual joke in the movie "Young Frankenstein" where Igor says to the guy, "Walk this way" and then limps away. The guy assumes "walk this way" means not only walk in that direction, but also walk with the same limp as Igor, and begins limping himself.
That's what "follow me" means. Not only to walk in the direction of Jesus, but also to walk like Jesus. That's what "carry your cross" means, to emulate Jesus. That's what it meant to be a disciple--it meant to do things just as the teacher did them, to follow his style of life, to live by his tenets.
In Christian thought, the command is to emulate Jesus. To any extent that we do not perfectly emulate Jesus, we have failed to keep His command...and we sin.
Jesus gives us part of that difference in the Sermon on the Mount, as He says over and over, "
You have heard it said, but I say.... " Right there is our part of the Covenant of Christ, a new covenant demanding a higher level of performance by
both parties. Christ calls us to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees.
Christians often ask, "Is it a sin to...?"
That's the wrong question. That is asking for a law, but that will always result in falling short. Looking for a law is like the one-talent steward who sought only not to do the wrong thing. He tried so hard not to do the wrong thing that he failed to do what was required. That's what we're doing when we ask, "Is it a sin....?"
"
Everything is permissible to me, but not everything is beneficial."
"Everything is permissible to me" is essentially a declaration of liberty from the Law. It means "I'm not looking for 'thou shalt not.'"
But "not everything is beneficial" means I'm looking for what is profitable to the Lord. That's a whole magnitude of difference.
"Is it a sin to get a tattoo?" Wrong question.
The correct question is, "Will it profit the Lord for me to get a tattoo?"
"Is it a sin for me to be wealthy?" Wrong question.
The correct question is, "Does my wealth profit the Lord?"
This does not mean there are no "rules." Broadly speaking, we can identify things that almost certainly never profit the Lord and in fact costs the Lord. Abusing one's wife, for instance, never profits the Lord, it costs the Lord. People who do evil in the name of the Lord are a cost to the Lord. We can define many of those things. But that is not "law" in the biblical sense, nor is it "work" in the biblical sense to emulate Jesus.
Many Christians erroneously (or at least incompletely) define "legalism." Legalism is what Jews live by. It specifically means that if you practice specific procedures, then God is
obligated to save you, the way an employer is obligated to pay wages to a worker. Legalism is the belief that by doing certain things, you
obligate God to pay you salvation.
This is the big thing Paul presents in Romans, and why he plays on the terms "wages" and "gift." People who believe in legalism belive that God
owes them salvation like a wage. The Jews believed that God
owed them salvation, and moreover, that God
was not permitted to save anyone who had not done the
work they had done.
Paul said basically, that all your work in keeping the Law is worth only death, if you get what God
owes you You'd better be hoping for what you are not owed--the
gift of salvation. We
don't want justice, we want mercy.
So to live a life in emulation of Jesus and in profitability to Jesus is not "legalism" because it's not done with a belief that it obligates Jesus to us. We don't emulate Jesus to obligate Him to bring us into His camp, we emulate Jesus because we are already in His camp.
This is the mistake made by those Jesus of whom Jesus said, "I never knew you!" What was their belief? "We
did things in your name!" They thought that because they
did things, Jesus was obligated to them. Wrong. Jesus is not obligated to them, they were obligated to Him.
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